Expelled for posting on Facebook
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- A Michigan student accused of posting a message about a former girlfriend on Facebook has been expelled from Calvin College, which boasts it’s, “dedicated to providing the best in liberal arts education”.
Tony Harris, a 19-year-old sophomore from Southfield, “was taken to Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services for treatment after college officials deemed him a suicide threat,” according to his mother, Vicky Harris, says the Grand Rapids Press.
“They are trying to destroy my child’s life and are doing it to me at the same time,” the story has her saying. “This is crazy. I raised my child to fight for what he believes in and what is right and that’s what he’s doing. I heard him say, ‘I’d rather die than admit to a lie.’ That doesn’t mean he’s gonna do anything to himself. It means he feels he’s right and being done wrong.”
Harris, said to have broken technology and conduct codes, was at first placed on a year’s probation, “ordered to write an online apology and forced to move from his dormitory because he and the woman lived in separate wings of the same building,” says the story, adding:
“The college also rescinded his ability to study overseas this semester, Harris said. That punishment was amended to six months’ probation and that an apology stay on his Facebook page for a week.
“Harris refused to meet a deadline last Friday to write the apology, his mother said.”
He said the former girlfriend, “had his password and wrote the message herself out of spite following their breakup,” according to the Grand Rapids Press.
Grand Rapids Press – Calvin College expels student accused of writing derogatory Facebook message, February 12, 2009
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February 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
and you wonder why I suggest avoiding protocols like this one.
sigh
February 16th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
If people are going to insist on using Facebook, WTF can’t they adjust their privacy settings to keep out the authoritarian voyeurs??!
Having said that, I don’t think much of those in positions of authority over these Facebook users that are spying on them. It’s just so wrong and creepy on so many levels.
If I were a college student of today, I would hope my Dean and those working under him/her would be in possession of a higher level of thinking than to scour the social sites for “student dirt”.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
” If people are going to insist on using Facebook, WTF can’t they adjust their privacy settings to keep out the authoritarian voyeurs??! ”
This.
” Having said that, I don’t think much of those in positions of authority over these Facebook users that are spying on them. It’s just so wrong and creepy on so many levels. ”
That x2
I wonder how much those authority figures would complain if a PI were hired to scour their lives, with the only purpose
of finding harmful dirt ? I wonder how many of those have something in their younger days they would rather not
have out in the open ( all of them ).
Every single person on the planet has had lapses of judgement and done foolish things in their youth.
Everyone.
Anyone who denies it is a liar.
Those mistakes, and how we learn from them make us who we are today.
To look at something like a facebook picture, and base a judgement wholly on that without context is
patently absurd.
It also makes things too easy to destroy someones carreer by falsely posting as your enemy, in order to
damage them.
I would love to have the cash to have a few PI’s snooping around in some higher places.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
It’s like everything else – those that have the resources take advantage of those that don’t. And it’s alright to do it to someone else, just don’t do it to me.
Most of the ones doing the spying never seem to provide a similar resource (like an open profile), either by design or by the same sense of privacy they’re invading.
Not that Facebook hasn’t had a hand in it themselves.
You’d think they would give simple and straightforward privacy controls.
After a few mutations, these controls continue to be curious, at best.
This is, of course, by design, as Facebook has always done everything it can to try to leave as much of that private data open (by default), in order to one day cash in on the marketers that are there waiting to grab it, while on the other hand, being able to *claim* it has provided the users with the options, and therefore, has fulfilled its commitment to their protection.
People really need to wake up and smell the tracking cookies on these social sites.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the college, I’m going to go ahead and assume that what he wrote was seen by people he has friended, and it was serious enough that those individuals told school officials. How else would they know?
I’m going to also assume the accusation that the ex-girlfriend did it herself was investigated and proven to be unlikely.
It’s likely “I’d rather die” was more a serious suicide threat, and less some statement of principle. Also, “Harris refused to meet a deadline last Friday to write the apology, his mother said” is reason enough to expel him. They gave him a way to rectify the situation, and he decided not to. Actions–> Consequences
February 16th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
A friend of mine was expelled from the dorm where she lived and worked as a Don because, on Facebook, she wrote her views of the Dean of Students. He IS an idiot, but you can’t post that publicly, friends only or not, it is still publicly posted. Naturally someone showed the Dean her comments and she was fired and expelled from the dorm.
That said, people are WAY too over protective these days. “Experts” who THINK they know what is going on inside a “child’s” head should re-educate themselves on reality. You cannot think you understand what is going through a child’s head as an adult. You do not think the way they do, even if you think you can relate, you can’t. There are some decent and excellent counsellors out there who don’t pull this shit in the need for fame or to justify their existence. They are great, but the law-pushing idiots who think they know everything are missing the boat.
Yes, kids to commit suicide and we should try to minimize that. But taking someone against their will WITHOUT common sense applied to the ‘data’ you’re using is truly stupid and I don’t know how it passed legality, as it is a violation of that person’s rights. “When kids stop shooting eachother….” How about when you find WHY the fucking kids are shooting each other you can make laws???
Having grown up with the label “problem kid” and being forced, yes FORCED, to speak with half-wit psychologists whom I played like you would not believe, I do have an understanding and hence bitterness towards this behaviour.
How about stopping the abuse from classmates and teachers and bullies? Yes teachers too! How about NOT pumping kids full of drugs because you’re funded by pharmaceuticals because no one will pay you to hear your opinion? How about actually TALKING with your kids and LISTENING to them and try to UNDERSTAND what they are going through?
Odd concept and those that claim to don’t. If they did, this kid would have been approached by real friends seeing if he is OK, because that’s what a smart counsellor would do. Why? Well, having been on the brink many times, when someone comes along with good intentions and wants to console you, you really just want to punch their lights out! They haven’t a clue what you’re going through, regardless of what they’ve been through, and if they did, they would have taken a hands-off, laid back, just chill about it approach.
The times when I was most vocal about suicide were the times when I was thinking and feeling low. The times when I was actually ready or close to suicide or thinking seriously about it, I was quiet! Because I needed to think, not be harassed by some fucktarded expert trying to tell me what I think and feel or what classification I fall into.
*end rant*
February 16th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Why give the benefit of the doubt to anyone here?
It wouldn’t be the first time a school adminstration simply took something online at “face value”, without considering anything else, and continued to “make an example” of a student. And, before any relevant facts are discovered, the student is already at a point of “impass” with the whole thing, maybe even considering throwing his year away. (When dealing with youth, you need to think extreme – that’s what youth does.)
It’s just too easy to write the kid off as being the author of his own demise, rather than take into account the numerous other things that could just as easily have happened here, given the nature of social sites, and the willingness of others to “contribute” to them.
February 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
lol
February 16th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Heh, combined with my account being suspended (it was without personal info and they don’t like that) and the change to their TOS makes me want to stay away from Facebook altogether.
http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever
(I see no article yet on that so I give you a link)
February 16th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
you want a similar story Jon?
I know a diabetic medical student who had a rough year with facebook during her last year of high school. One day she was in the library when she noticed her blood sugar was low. Naturally she pulled out a juice box and drank it. However in this particular library their is a nazi librarian, who thinks no food or drink should ever enter her domain no matter how badly you need it. The “book nazi”
as she became known, tried to have the diabetic student suspended and banned from the library. Well, the student started a facebook group to voice her discontent for the librarian and many students from the same school joined. Unfortunately it turned into a huge harrassement deal where they called the librarian a hole bunch of distasteful names. The librarian happened to be slightly tech savvy or she found out one way or another and saw all the comments students were voicing in opposition of her obsessive control of the library to which she monitors.
In the end every student of that facebook group was hauled from class to be served with a suspension. To make matters worse that same diabetic student had to write a formal apology to the “book nazi” when in reality it should have been the other way around.
This folks is why I never have/will use facebook.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:11 am
At the diabetic person:
You should ask this person to write her story and submit it here to Jon.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:42 am
@above I cant get in touch with the student its been a long time however i think her family still lives in my hometown.
Though I doubt the reader’s here would care much to read it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens everyday.